Name On The Bullet - Edge Series 6 (34 page)

‘I heard from your son that there’s been a whole lot of your life you should have cause to regret, feller.’ Edge struck a match on the front of the desk, lit the cigarette and drew contentedly against it.

‘It’s sure as hell that there is and it’s about time I learned my lesson. But lessons learned now don’t have much time to do me any damn good.’ He rocked and the chair creaked.

‘Tell you something, feller?’

‘What?’

‘There are maybe lots of people who’d likely find your life real interesting to hear all about. The kind of mean minded, black hearted sonsofbitches who wanted to but never had the chance to live the same kind of lives themselves. You get my drift?’

McGowan stopped rocking the chair, held up a frail hand, shook his head and allowed meekly: ‘Okay, I’m boring you – talking up a storm about stuff that ain’t of no kind of interest to a man like you.’

Edge exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘I was of a mind to listen to you when you made mention of money, McGowan. On account of it’s a subject in which circumstances force me to take an interest.’

‘I guess you must have spent what cash my son Elliot paid you for working on his place over in Brogan Falls?’

‘It’s my business what I do with my money, feller.’ Edge reached behind him and banged the palm of a hand on the bell plunger. The sound was tinny: unlikely to carry much beyond the curtained alcove in back of the desk.

‘I paid Fletcher Sheldon five hundred dollars to kill Wendell Quaid, mister,’ McGowan blurted, the gaze in his weak green eyes darting everywhere but toward Edge as he began to rock the chair faster. ‘Two hundred and fifty up front. The rest I gave him in the saloon the other night. I’ve got just two hundred and ten bucks to my name and it’s all in my pocket right now. Willing to let you have that, here and now. To spend or put in the bank, whatever you want. Like you said it’s a man’s own business what he does with his own money.’

‘How easy, feller?’

‘What?’

‘You said I’d make some easy money. I ain’t even sure standing here listening to you is easy. Not while I’m thinking I might be being set up for something fatal to happen to me.’

Edge looked pointedly about the dimly sunlit lobby, at the curtained alcove where he was sure no one waited and toward the top of the stairs for as far as he could see to where a wall intervened. Then out through the open doorway at the sunlit street where it was still as quiet and empty of activity as it had been since he left the cemetery.

‘You’re a hard man, Edge.’

‘I’ve always done my own killing: never did pay to have anyone gunned down.’

McGowan blinked his watery eyes and dismissed the response with an irritable sweep of his bony hand. ‘And a smart one. So the last kind of man I’d try to double cross. Especially when you’re standing there with a gun in your holster and I’m sitting here without so much as a toothpick to defend myself with. And although you ain’t no spring chicken you got enough years on me to make you a whole lot faster than me even if I was packing iron.’

Edge hit the bell again and made another glinting eyed survey of the lobby and the entries into it from within and outside the hotel.

‘I’m real old. But I still ain’t ready to die. Who wants to die, unless a crazy man? And though I’ve been dumb, I ain’t crazy. Like to lay it on the line for you. It was a stupid thing for me to do, fixing for a gun-for-hire to kill Quaid. A spur of the moment thing. Wasn’t hardly any thought went into it.’

‘What happened then don’t make any difference to now, feller.’ Edge started toward the foot of the stairway as he continued: ‘Your son and his wife and daughter were good to me all summer. They paid me well enough and I figure I can spare your granddaughter some time if it ain’t too much trouble. And the way it looks, it’s not going to be any trouble at all to find Quaid’s killer.’

McGowan suddenly stopped rocking the chair and blurted with a note of desperation in his tone: ‘Mister, the Sheldon couple can’t rightly be blamed! Fletcher Sheldon’s the same kind you are. A guy with an eye for a fast buck. Me, I was after a whole bundle of money.’

He swallowed hard. ‘With Quaid dead, there was a chance my granddaughter would marry Kent Wilson. And the money in that family would’ve bailed me out of trouble and no mistake. It was my last chance and I had to use up my last piece of cash and take it. It was like fate planned it for me when I run into that young gunslinger and his wife over at the Timberland the other day. And we got to talking the way we did.’

His words were coming faster and shriller by the moment as Edge reached the foot of the stairway and started up. ‘You hear me, mister? My last two hundred and ten bucks to let the Sheldons be. And I’m willing to go back to Brogan Falls with you. Admit it all to Elliot and Martha and Julia.’

Edge paused halfway between the foot of the flight of stairs and the right angle turn where they went from sight above. Directed a glance toward the frightened old man as he half rose from the rocker and wiped the back of a hand over his saliva-run lips in the depths of his straggly beard. Edge listened intently and since the creaking of the chair had been silenced there seemed to be no sound within the entire town: except for the laboured breathing of the fearful McGowan. He drew his Colt, hooked a thumb to the hammer and asked evenly:

‘What are you scared of, old timer?’

Then footfalls began to sound on the hard packed dirt out front of the hotel. Those of a man, moving without haste, angling toward the building from the far side of the street. Edge peered up toward the turn of the stairway, his head cocked a little to the side, listening for a sound to warn that he ought to be as afraid as Robert McGowan. A board creaked on the upper floor and he clicked back the Colt’s hammer, swung his head from side to side and paid scant attention to the old man hunched in the rocker. While by turns he concentrated his narrowed-eyed gaze on the sun bright entrance of the hotel and the length of the stairway where somebody from the second floor would appear at any moment. This as the man approaching from outside stepped up on to the porch, crossed it at the same measured pace and halted in the doorway where he was a recognisable silhouette even before he spoke.

‘There’s not going to be any killing in my town, mister. Not if I can do anything to stop it.’

‘That’s your sworn duty as a peace officer, feller,’ Edge allowed evenly as the tall and skinny, sickly looking lawman remained on the threshold. His legs splayed and his thumbs hooked over his belt at either side of the buckle: the right one close to the butt of the holstered revolver.

‘You never told me you had any business in town over and above digging up your buddy’s bones?’

‘That’s all I knew I had to do when I rode into Pine River Junction, feller.’ Edge said.

‘But then I heard that a couple of wanted killers with bounties on their heads were holed up in the hotel.’

‘Look, I want you two men to realise – ‘ McGowan started to plead.

‘I heard the same and that’s the second reason I’m here,’ Haydon cut in on the miserably scowling old man. ‘Because arresting suspected killers is another duty of mine: even though I’m not in line to collect any bounty money. And it’s what I plan on doing: at the request of Marshal Gene Hooper, the lawman over at Brogan Falls.

‘Aw shit!’ McGowan slumped in the chair that rocked once and was still as he set his feet firmly down on the carpeted floor. He fixed Haydon with a level stare and demanded:

‘Who told you about – ‘

‘I did,’ Hannah Foster announced as she appeared at the turn of the stairway. Edge had not been aware that the woman was so close and vented a grunt of irritated surprise: a sound that maybe also expressed relief she did not seem to mean any harm to him. Then, like she was taking care not to spark a violent reaction to her sudden appearance, she held both hands out to the sides to signal she was not armed. And the snug fit of the simple dark coloured dress that closely contoured her angular form showed she carried no concealed weapon as she slowly descended the stairway. And obviously made an effort to avoid meeting the puzzled gaze of Edge.

She spoke as slowly as she moved. ‘There’s been killing enough and none of it has solved any damn thing. Only the law has the right to take life. One for one, after a proper legal trial. And I want to see the man who killed Vic Munro is tried and hung for what he did. That’s the only way I’ll be able to be certain the right thing’s been done for him.’ She still did not meet Edge’s gaze as she glided by him: remained the focus of all attention herself as she reached the foot of the stairway, turned and moved toward the old man in the chair.

‘All right, Hannah’ Haydon said sternly. ‘Where are the Sheldons?’

‘High tailing it away from here by now if they’ve got any sense,’ she answered as she drew close to McGowan.

The emaciated old man continued to stare fixedly at her, more terrified than ever. Haydon demanded: ‘What?’

‘This better be good, lady!’ Edge took two stairs in one stride toward the upper floor.

‘I lied,’ the woman admitted.

‘No!’

McGowan’s shrill plea was immediately followed by two muffled gunshots. And Edge froze his lunge, turned just his head and glowered at where the reason for the muted sound of the gunfire was vividly explained. Saw that he had been wrong about the woman’s dress not being able to conceal a weapon. The hem was still hiked up from where she had stooped and reached beneath the fabric to draw a tiny gun carried in the top of her right high buttoned boot. A little derringer over-and-under that she had plunged into McGowan’s gaping mouth. Then squeezed both triggers to explode two bullets into his head. Small calibre but at point blank range as effective as a high velocity rifle in ending the life of the old man.

‘Oh, my God!’ Haydon groaned as the woman backed away from her victim. And the corpse slumped forward to tip out of the chair and sprawl on to the carpet: face down to hide the blood that spilled out of the mouth.

The two flies buzzed noisily in to feast as Hannah Foster allowed the bloodied gun to slip from her lax fingers, reached down to straighten the lower part of her dress and at the same time wiped her crimson wet hand on a hip. All the while she kept her gaze fixed upon the unmoving form of the dead old man until, after stretched seconds of silence that followed Haydon’s exclamation, she said in an even tone:

‘Yeah, I lied. I’m sorry but I couldn’t wait for the law to take its course. It was him who killed Vic.’ She shot a glance toward Edge on the stairway, then twisted from the waist to include Haydon in the explanation she offered: ‘I heard all three of them talking after I got back from the cemetery: the Sheldons and him. Sheldon was scared out of his wits and said he couldn’t face Edge in a gunfight: not with his bum leg. And he sure wasn’t going to hang for killing that Quaid guy in Brogan Falls.’

She grimaced, looked down at the corpse and swallowed hard. Maybe only now acknowledged to herself that she could hang for what she had just done to Robert McGowan. Then she regained her composure and pointed a rock steady finger at the dead man. ‘Sarah Sheldon blamed the old timer for talking Fletcher into killing Quaid just because he needed money so bad. But it was McGowan who did his own cowardly killing when he shot Vic through the bars of the cell window. Hoping that Brogan Falls folks would be satisfied. That’s what McGowan admitted to Fletcher and Sarah Sheldon.’

‘I should get after this Sheldon gun-for-hire and his wife,’ Haydon said without enthusiasm.

The woman went on as if there had been no interruption: ‘Sheldon said nobody would be fooled and that McGowan ought to take all the blame for the whole thing. And he returned the money the old man came back here and paid him.’

Hannah looked from Haydon to Edge and back again, but saw nothing in the expression of either man to offer her hope. ‘The second half of the blood money. He said McGowan could use it to buy off Edge. Then admit what he did, which would make the Brogan Falls folks even more ready to let things rest. Seeing as how it was the bride’s own grandfather who fixed for the killing to happen. Sheldon told McGowan if he didn’t do that, then he’d kill him right there in the room upstairs.’

‘When did the Sheldons leave town?’ Edge asked.

‘That’s of no damn consequence to you!’ Haydon snapped and stepped abruptly into the lobby. ‘But I sure want to know the answer, Hannah. And if you don’t tell me all you know about this business, you’ve got no chance of escaping the rope for killing that old timer right in front of a peace officer!’

The woman snarled with contempt: ‘That old bastard hired a wet-behind-the-ears gunslinger to shoot down the guy his granddaughter was going to marry. Which I don’t give that for!’ She snapped her fingers as her gaze remained riveted on the slumped corpse at her feet. ‘But then he killed an innocent man! Who was unarmed and locked up in a cell!

Vic Munro thought the world of me and he was going to give me a better life than I’ve ever had before. And if I have to hang for doing what I did to that mercenary old bastard, I’ll die a whole lot happier than if – ‘

‘You’ve admitted that what you said before - about wanting McGowan to hang after due process of law - was all so much horse manure!’ Haydon broke in. ‘So quit talking unless it answers the questions I’m going to ask you. First off, where are Sheldon and that wife of his heading?’

‘They ain’t married,’ Hannah replied evenly with a shrug. ‘Her name’s Sarah Tucker. They were just pretending to be respectable folks.’